Hard drive utility

Summary: This post helps to fix the external hard drive greyed out in the Disk Utility problem. If you find the disk icon, the mount, erase, and partition buttons are greyed out for the external disk, apply the proven methods in this post to fix the issue and recover data with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.You plug an external hard drive into your Mac as normal, but the external hard drive is not showing up in Mac Finder or on the desktop this time. So, you launch Disk Utility to check this drive, only to find that the external hard drive is greyed out in Disk Utility. You can calm down first because if you see the external hard drive in Disk Utility with some disk information, your external hard drive at least has no hardware errors. That's to say, you have a great chance to repair it without data loss.Specifically, you might see one of these in Disk Utility: The external hard drive's icon greyed out in Disk Utility. Disk Utility Partition greyed out for external hard drive. Disk Utility Erase greyed out for external hard drive. Disk Utility Mutton greyed out for external hard drive.Now let's dive into each scenario! Share this post to help others fix the external hard drive greyed out in Disk Utility!How to fix the external hard drive icon greyed out in Disk Utility?One of the most common appearances is that the external hard drive shows up in Disk Utility but is greyed out in the left sidebar. What you can do in this situation?Solution 1: Mount the external hard drive manuallySometimes, your USB drive greyed out in Disk Utility just because it was not mounted. Thus, you can try to mount this external hard drive in Disk Utility manually. To do this, you can select your external drive and click on the "Mount" button at the upper menu bar. If it doesn't work, reboot your Mac and try again.Solution 2: Update the disk driverAnother practical solution to this issue is to update the necessary drivers. To update an outdated disk driver, you can simply open the Apple Menu > System Settings >General > Software Updates. This will automatically check for updates. If there are any available macOS updates, follow the onscreen guide to update the Mac.After updating the disk driver, you can reboot your Mac, reconnect the external drive to your Mac, and check whether the drive is mounted now.How to fix Disk Utility Mount greyed out for external hard drive?The SSD/HDD/USB flash drive/SD card shows up in gray and won't mount in Disk Utility, even if you have tried to manually mount it. Don't worry, you can check the following solutions and

Summary: If the external hard drive is not showing up in Disk Utility, you can try 10 solutions to make Mac recognize it again. Free download iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac to recover files from the external hard drive on Mac.When an external hard drive is connected to Mac, it usually would be detected and recognized by Disk Utility. However, sometimes you check the connected external hard drive in Disk Utility, it doesn't show up as you thought. External hard drives not showing up on Mac issues could happen to some best external hard drives like WD, Toshiba, Seagate, etc. It also happens after you share the same drive between Windows and macOS.Then, how can you make this external hard drive work again? This article will help you to find an external hard drive that is not showing up in Mac Disk Utility easily.If your external hard drive is not showing up on macOS Sequoia, you can resolve it with the solutions in this in-depth guide.You can share this post with your friends to deal with the question together.Why is an external hard drive not showing up in Disk Utility?External hard drive not showing up in Disk Utility will cause panic, because Disk Utility is a built-in disk management program for Mac computers. All connected drives should be listed in Disk Utility. Then users can verify, check, repair, erase, partition, rename, encrypt, and unmount volumes and drives there.Then why this time your external hard drive is not showing up there? If you have known how Mac recognizes an external hard drive, it would be easier to understand.But to make it more simple for you, we list some common reasons for this issue.Malfunctioned USB portExternal hard drives won't show up in Disk Utility when the USB port is not working, being loose or dusty. Also, you need to know that not all USB ports are the same. For example, The Canon Micro USB port looks like the standard ones. But some standard external hard drives can only be plugged in without workability.Mac operating system is busyYou may have improperly ejected a storage device last time. Consequently, another external hard drive connected to the same USB port can't be recognized. It's because your Mac is busy in dealing with the former device.Faulty USB cable or external hard disk enclosureSome external hard drives are wrapped in a hard drive case. Similarly, some sd cards, CF cards, and other memory cards are accessed by card readers. So you can open those removable drives on Mac via USB cables. However, once these hardware devices are broken, the external hard drive will not show up in Disk Utility due to the lack of power and data supply.USB-C adapter problemsIt matters if your MacBook Pro or MacBook Air only has USB-C (Thunderbolt 3) ports. You need to use a USB-C to USB adapter to connect iOS devices, external hard drives, and many of your standard USB accessories to your Mac. But a wrong USB-C cable or adapter

See if they can solve your problem.Solution 1: Repair this external hard drive with First AidIn some cases, a disk is unmountable and greyed out in Disk Utility because some minor disk errors are stopping your Mac from reading this drive. Fortunately, there is a built-in utility on your Mac called First Aid that can check and repair such minor file system errors.Go to Utilities, find Disk Utility, and run this program.Click Show All Devices > View option and select this external hard drive in the left sidebar.Click First Aid in the top menu of Disk Utility.Click Run to check and repair errors in this drive.Solution 2: Reformat this external hard driveSuppose First Aid failed on the external hard drive, and you still can't mount the USB drive. Disk Utility Mount greyed out could caused by its seriously corrupted file system. Reformatting can fix the file system corruption, but it also erases all data on it.Therefore, if you haven't backed up data before or this external hard drive is used as a Time Machine backup drive, the safe choice is to recover lost data first with reliable data recovery software, like iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac. If data loss is not a hassle, you can skip reformatting.iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac is a professional Mac data recovery software, which can recover lost data from unmountable/formatted/inaccessible external hard drives. It can recover lost data from APFS, HFS+, HFS, FAT32, and exFAT formatted external hard drives, USB drives, flash drives, SD cards, CF cards, memory cards, etc. This software also can undelete documents, pictures, emails, music, etc. from Trash.It supports Mac OS X 10.11 and later versions and works fine on M1/M2/M3/M4 and Intel-based Macs.Step 1: Recover data from the greyed-out external hard drive with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac1. Free download, install, and launch iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac on your Mac.2. Select the external hard drive that is greyed out in Disk Utility and click Search for Lost Data to scan for data stored on this drive. 3. Once the scanning is done, you can open the Complete result on the [file system] folder to check the recoverable files. 4. Select a file and tap Preview to view the contents. 5. Check the box next to the wanted file and click Recover to save the file to another healthy storage device. Step 2: Reformat this external hard drive with Disk Utility• How to format external hard drives on Mac?If this method works to fix the greyed-out external hard drive in Disk Utility, share it with more people!How to fix Disk Utility Partition greyed out for external hard drive?An external hard drive may be greyed out in Disk Utility, so you